Thursday, September 25, 2014

Holder Quits--and other important news today

Update

Fifty years ago at this time, I was in Platoon 273, 2nd
Recruit Training Bn., MCRD Parris Island, SC, working to earn the title "Marine."
Here I am today, still getting up at Zero-dark-thirty, now to get my medical
stuff done, and get to PT Rehab for my appointment. The self-discipline that my
three DIs, Sgt. Owens, Sgt. Martin and Sgt. Harris gave me was a priceless
gift, that enabled me to have a very successful career, and now to do the
necessary to get through this lung transplant process. Not that I love getting
up before the sun, but the sunrise Wednesday morning was great, pink and blue
in all directions. See below.

The local VA hospital where I get my care has been getting
flak for wait times. So they held a Town Hall meeting Tuesday evening. I went
to put my positive experiences on the record. Given that these things attract
those with a grievance, I was pleased that there were as many positive comments
as negative. There was a Marine sitting behind me who had a double lung
transplant 17 years ago; Like me, he credits the VA with keeping him alive.
He's now my role model. Even the transsexual vet had good things to say. Her
only complaint was that sometimes staff members call her "mister."
There were a lot of complaints about wait times to see a primary care doc. The
VA leadership team said that when Obamacare went into effect in January, the Madison
VA expected no impact. But new patient intakes rose from 140 a month to 350! (Apparently,
more vets are going to the VA because of the private insurance changes.) At the
same time, they lost 25% of their Primary Care docs, due to retirements,
illness and docs taking other jobs--so they get it and are working on it, have
made new hires. All within the budget Washington
gives them, of course. A Primary Care doc has over 1,000 patients at the VA.

One WWII vet said they should hire more docs with combat
experience. Huh. A bit hard to find. Plus I want they best docs they can get,
regardless if they have been shot at or not!

Thursday morning I was standing at the kitchen sink,
starting my NetiPot (which keeps me from getting
colds), when a fellow tooled past on the sidewalk in a motorized wheel chair,
complete with a head support system. God often has a not-too-subtle way of
keeping me from feeling sorry for myself. ~Bob

General News and Comment

This calls for a whisky: Holder resigning as attorney
general, officials say

Excerpt: Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce
Thursday that he is resigning from the Obama administration, officials
confirmed to Fox News. The decision would cap a tumultuous six-year term for
the nation's top law enforcement official. 9No we have to worry who is
next--and does Obama put him on the Supreme Court. ~Bob)

Excerpt:Sailors
(and Marines and Soldiers and Airmen and Coast Guardsmen) know of these
ceremonies - they know the tradition, the pomp and circumstance, and the
importance. They know the hardships and sacrifices and the thrills and rewards
and sometimes disappointments and sadness that comes with service.

Excerpt: The daughter of Trek Bicycle founder Richard Burke,
the woman gunning for Scott Walker’s job, is the scion of a prominent Wisconsin family who’s had the wealth to flit from one
career to another. In an election being litigated primarily on economic issues,
Mary Burke has touted her business experience. But it’s the sort of business experience
only an heiress could afford: a couple of years spent toiling at a failed
start-up company and two stints working for her father.

"[I]nstituting a Congress with power to do whatever
would be for the good ... would be also a power to do whatever evil they
please. ... [The Constitution] was intended to lace them up straightly within
the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not
be carried into effect." --Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on a National Bank,
1791

Excerpt: Gov. Scott Walker was dealt a major blow Wednesday
when a federal appeals court overturned a lower court's ruling that had stopped
a probe into Walker's
campaign and more than two dozen Republican and conservative groups for alleged
illegal campaign activity.

Excerpt: In just the past few weeks, the list of expected
stops has shrunk, with several campaigns that were requesting the president as
recently as late August now pulling back those requests. ... Responding to
months of pleas from Democrats urging the White House to provide more help, the
president and first lady will be going to places where there are competitive
races — though only those in clearly Democratic territory, focusing on
locations where the president’s approval remains strong even as it’s dropped
pretty much everywhere else. As expected, and as requested by the campaigns
themselves, that will mean the president will avoid all but one Senate race —
in Michigan — while the first lady will appear
in Iowa on
behalf of Bruce Braley. (What's really interesting is what's missing from the
list: No Colorado. No Virginia.
No stop in Ohio
for Ed Fitzgerald's gubernatorial bid. And despite that earlier paragraph: Obama's also not currently planning on
going to New Hampshire
for Shaheen, whose recent polls show a clear Obama drag. --Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt)

Excerpt: Former Virginia
senator Jim Webb says he is mulling a run for the presidency. There are reasons
to doubt his viability — although he was an effective campaigner in
2006. Here are a dozen reasons he should run:

Former senator Jim Webb laid out in stark terms the economic
and military challenges facing America, saying he is “seriously looking” at a
2016 presidential campaign as a Democrat.

Webb, an ex-Navy secretary
under Ronald Reagan who served one term as a senator representing Virginia,
outlined in remarks at the National Press Club the federal government’s
role as the middle class gets squeezed and the U.S. fights to protect national
interests abroad. He shared what he called his “governing principles” in his
speech and on Twitter. “The very character of America is being called into
question,” Webb said Tuesday. “Who are we as a people? What is it that unites
us, rather than divides us? Where is our common ground when the centrifugal
forces of social cohesion are spinning so out of control that the people at the
very top exist in a distant outer orbit?” (This is
unbelievable. I don’t know what democratic party he is referring to. Our
president claimed that we are responsible for global warming at his speech
before the un today. It seems that he believes that we are responsible for all
the bad things in the world. --Don)

Excerpt: Just a few weeks ago, Senate Democrats held show
votes on an constitutional amendment designed to curtail
political speech, ostensibly for the purpose of abating the scourge of
money in politics. But Democrats love money in politics, so long
as it's
their own. Their showboating, therefore, is all about
hypocritically claiming the moral high ground (while casting Republicans
as defenders of "dark money" or whatever), and milking
more dollars out of their credulous
base.

Excerpt: Before we jump to conclusions about what
disparities mean and whether they are indicators of injustice, we might examine
some other disparities to see what we can make of them. According to a recent
study conducted by BondUniversity in Australia, sharks are nine times as
likely to attack and kill men than they are women. If sinister motivation is
attributed for this disparity, as is done in the cases of sex and racial
disparities, we can only conclude that sharks are sexist. Another sex disparity
is despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the population and so are women,
men are struck by lightning six times as often as women. I wonder what whoever
is in charge of lightning has against men. (when the hell is the government
going to do something about the NBA's and the NFL's blatant discrimination
against old, short, out-of-shape, uncoordinated white guys like me? ~Bob)

Tempest over Obama's
tea cup salute: Commander-in-chief sparks anger by saluting US Marines with
drink in his hand

Excerpt: President was exiting his
Marine One helicopter after landing in New York City
for speeches about global warming and fighting ISIS in Syria Commander-in-chief is a
military title that entitles Obama to a salute, and he's expected to return the
gesture. On Tuesday he saluted two uniformed US Marines while holding a cup in
his hand, a breach that won't win him fans among veterans or servicemen. ( I'm
sure there is no one on his staff who would know that you either salute
properly or you don't salute. Saluting back the Marine guards with his coffee
cup in his hand is just one more lovely demonstration of how this man knows
NOTHING of the military, courtesies, or anything else. Heaven help us. --Del. Well, I'm neither
outraged nor surprised. It's the kind of thing I expect of this guy. ~Bob)

Excerpt: President Barack Obama returned a formal military
salute with a one-handed coffee-cup salute Tuesday, only a few hours after he
dispatched the nation’s military on their attack mission into northern Syria. White
House aides posted the sloppy salute video on Instagram.

Excerpt: Former Sen. Scott Brown, who’s running against
incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) to be New Hampshire’s next U.S.
Senator, will deliver a foreign policy speech here midday Wednesday during
which he’ll hammer Shaheen and President Barack Obama for weakening America's standing
in the world.

Careful About What You Say: The Speech Police Are
Listening. By Bernard Goldberg

Excerpt: You may have heard about the radio play-by-play man
for the San Francisco
49ers who got into trouble for saying things you’re apparently not allowed to
say. The broadcaster, Ted Robinson, was a guest on a radio show and uttered
these words about football player Ray Rice’s then fiancée (and now wife), who
by now the whole world knows was knocked out by Rice in an elevator at an
Atlantic City casino: “How does she marry him after that? How does she go in
front of [NFL Commissioner] Goodell [and make a case for Ray Rice]?
That’s pathetic to me.”

Excerpt: Previously unpublished correspondence between Hillary
Clinton and the late left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky reveals new details about
her relationship with the controversial Chicago
activist and shed light on her early ideological development.

Excerpt: Here's a specific criticism I have in the Politico
piece: It reports, almost immediately, that Lerner has received derogatory emails,
including one quoted by Politico calling her a "dirty Jew." Now, this
kind of journalism -- the parade of horribles from Internet Nasties -- has the
inevitable effect of creating sympathy for the person receiving the email, and,
more importantly, discrediting all critics opposed to the recipient, even
though very few people critical of Lerner (apparently just the one guy) was so
filled with rage and so lacking in self-control or discretion that he wrote an
anti-semitic Email Nasty to her. In a court of law this would not be permitted,
as it is irrelevant to the main story (Lerner's actual guilt or innocence) and
is also unduly prejudicial.

Excerpt: The Washington Post announced large cuts in
retirement benefits on Tuesday, declaring that it would eliminate future retirement medical benefits
and freeze defined-benefit pensions for nonunion employees. The company also
said that in negotiations that started Tuesday, it will seek to impose the same
conditions on employees covered by the union — one of the first indications of
how The Post’s new owner, Amazon.com founder Jeffrey P. Bezos, will manage
relations with the staff of the news organization.

To keep up with 21st
century threats, the military needs to modernize its hiring. By Renee J.
Squier

Excerpt: The writer is
head of diversity, inclusion and women’s policy for the U.S. Navy. The
views expressed here are her own. If the United
States were attacked again, the way it was at Pearl Harbor or on Sept. 11, would you step forward
to serve in the military? If you’ve climbed any distance up the career ladder,
the answer is probably no, because the military hires people almost exclusively
at entry level, and signing up could severely diminish your pay and status. (Say, Mr. CEO, how'd you like to be an
Admiral? I wonder what rank they'd offer a retired Association Executive?
Though when I was in the USMC reserves, a National Guard officer told me that
as a Senator with a BA, working on a Masters, the Guard would make me at least
a Captain. I said, "With all due respect, sir, I'd rather be a corporal of
Marines." He got tight jaws, but what was he going to do? Tell my Colonel?
I gather from other links the writer of this piece is a Navy Captain. ~Bob)​

The IRS targeted organizations teaching the Constitution
and Bill of Rights. By Michael Barone

Excerpt: For those of you who thought the Internal Revenue
Service was only interested in squelching the free speech rights of
organizations supporting conservatives, here’s something even more disturbing. Over
at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, Georgetown law professor Nicholas Quinn
Rosenkranz reports that on Jan. 20, 2012, the IRS revised its BOLO ("Be On
the Lookout") list to include "political action type organizations
involved in . . . educating on the Constitution and Bill of Rights." He
notes that the targeted organizations included Linchpins of Liberty in Tennessee, the Spirit of Freedom Institute in Wyoming and the Constitutional Organization of Liberty in
Pennsylvania.

Hilarious: Young
Woman Lists The Top 10 Reasons Why She’s NOT A Democrat

Excerpt: By George, I think she’s got it — check out this
hilarious video of a recovering liberal, now conservative, stating her Top Ten
Reasons why she’s no longer a Democrat. One thing is for certain, the younger
generation in America
is starting to realize that hopey changey thing ain’t working for them and
their future. I guarantee you’ll bust a laugh with this one. Hat tip to
@ellysa_maye and her exceptional use of social media to make her point

Texans Created Over A Thousand Local Businesses After Texas Eased Restrictions
On Selling Food Made At Home. By Nick Sibilla

Excerpt: Come and bake it. Texas is enjoying a burst of entrepreneurship
after enacting laws that let anyone turn a home kitchen into a business
incubator. Under “cottage food” laws, people can sell food baked or cooked at
home, like cookies, cakes and jams, if it’s deemed to have a very low chance of
causing foodborne illnesses. Crucially, cottage food laws exempt home bakers
from having to rent commercial kitchen space.

Excerpt: Remember When Biden Laughed at Romney for
Suggesting We’d Bomb Syria?
Wow. Just wow. This may be the most amazing piece of video
that Joe Biden has ever produced… and he has made a lot of heart-stoppingly
funny videos. Just watch it and then we’ll talk a little about it.

Journalists Come
Forward: Obama is Much “Worse” Than Bush On Major Issue

Excerpt: According to a number of leading journalists, the
Obama administration has been less transparent than that of his predecessor. Despite
campaign pledges and later claims to the contrary, they say Bush was less
secretive than President Barack Obama, according to a report from COSP. “Bush
was bad,” said Associated Press Editor Kathleen Carroll at a joint convention
of the American Society of News Editors and Associated Press Media Editors in Chicago recently.
“Obama’s worse.”

Race Card News

Ferguson from my St. Louis contact

More riots, looting, burning stores and shooting at the
police last night in Ferguson.
The reason: The police say a candle fell over and caught the little Mike Brown
memorial on fire. Mourners had built the memorial at the location of the poor
boy's death. The rioters said that they were looting because the police set the
fire and burned the memorial. The police say that's not true. --BW.

Excerpt: One of the men brandished a silver gun. Police said
both men were black and in their early 20s. The first man was described as
being of thin build and wore a white tank-top and blue jeans. He had medium
length twisted braids and had a small sliver handgun. (If two white guys
robber black couples shouting, "This is for Dillon Taylor," how would
the media react? http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/elder082814.php3

Excerpt: As Bruce Rauner and Pat Quinn duke it out in
commercials over wine, nursing
homes, and wife
beaters on the street, here’s a troubling statistic that you probably won't
hear about this election cycle: Fewer than 48 percent of civilian,
non-institutionalized African-American men in Illinois are employed. That makes
the employment rate for black men in Illinois
the lowest in the Midwest.

Excerpt: Failing to heed this cautionary tale was one
Daniele Watts, an actress whose
name was familiar to almost no one until she, too, surrendered to the allure of
victimhood. On the afternoon of Sept. 11, as Watts
would tell it, she and her boyfriend, Brian Lucas, were set upon and harassed
without cause by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department. We must
insert at this point the information that Watts
is black and Lucas is white, facts that in an ideal world would be meaningless
but in the present case are relevant. (I was really blown away to read that a
Black actress had been harassed by a LA cop for kissing her White husband in public.
This came out over the weekend. First I thought "Damn, do we have another
crazy, overzealous cop here?", but then I thought, "maybe more will
come out about this". Well, a LOT more
has come out about this. The big thing is not that the man is actually a
boyfriend, not a husband, after all, you could still kiss your boyfriend in
public. No, it turns out the big thing is that it wasn't exactly kissing, not
even torrid French kissing. It was flat-out sex on a car seat, partially out of
the car, and far enough out, close enough to a building, that people in the
building took lovely pictures and gave or sold them to the media. Not much
question that this was hot sex, enough to make many people envious. And when
people in the building complain to the police department that sex is going on
in plain sight, the cops are supposed to respond, in case it's prostitution,
which is where much of the public sex in LA comes from. Which gives the
responding officer "probable cause" which means the officer gets to
see your ID. The young lady flipped out on him, played the race card, then told
him she has a publicist, then broke down in hysterics and used some nasty
language. How do we know this? Because he's a smart cop and recorded
everything. This is what gets people tired, the instant charge of profiling and
racism, when in fact the facts show the cop doing exactly what he was supposed
to do, and getting massive attitude back. What's sad about it too is that it
makes it harder to get support when maybe there was racism involved, as we know
there sometimes is. The article gives you links to the pictures and the
recording too. --Del)

Excerpt: Normally, no one would care that in a recent
Atlantic essay -- "Why I hope to die at 75"-- 57-year-old
Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel argued that living to be 75 years old was long
enough for anyone. ... But Emanuel is no garden-variety crackpot. ...
Unfortunately, he was one of the chief architects of the
troubled Affordable Care Act and a key medical advisor to the Obama
administration. (I wish I was half the writer, half as productive or half as
knowledgeable at 68 as Dr. Thomas Sowell is at 84. ~Bob)

Feds Lack the Data to Determine How Well
Key Obamacare Provisions Are Working

Excerpt: Federal health insurance officials can't tell
Congress how much the government has spent since 2010 selling Obamacare to a
key segment of the market, according to the Government Accountability Office.
The accounting system used by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, which
manages Obamacare, doesn't track "expenditure totals for CCIIO-related
polling, focus groups, or advertising and other public relations
activities," GAO said in a report made public Monday. (And if they did
track it, it would be lost when their hard drives all crashed at once. ~Bob)

Excerpt: For patients, however, it is risky to allow the
government to pay physicians to counsel us on end-of-life issues. There is
another approach, but it is so emotionally challenging that it may be
impossible to implement. End-of-life planning is back on the radar screen
because of a very thorough report just
released by the Institute
of Medicine (IoM). It
comprises a wealth of information on the state of end-of-life planning in America today.
Unfortunately, it contains a dangerous recommendation: Government-funded
counseling.

The Great Healthcare Cashout: Top Cardin aide to the
hospital lobby. By Timothy P. Carney

Excerpt: The lawmakers, federal appointees and congressional
staffers who crafted Obamacare continue to get rich by going to work for the
companies subsidized and regulated by the law.

Two weeks ago, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., a member of the
Finance Committee's health care subcommittee, bid adieu on the Senate floor to a longtime staffer,
Priscilla Ross, with a truly impressive record of public service. ... Ross,
this week, began as "senior associate director for federal relations"
at the American Hospital Association. In other words, she will help run the
hospital industry's main lobbying shop.

Undocumented Democrat News

Harvard Gives Student
Full Ride After He Tells Them He's Illegal Immigrant

Excerpt: When Dario Guerrero, an illegal immigrant who found
out about his status in high school, told Harvard that he was in the country
illegally, the school encouraged him to apply--and gave him a full scholarship
after he was accepted.

Excerpt: The idea that "Climate science is
settled" runs through today's popular and policy discussions.
Unfortunately, that claim is misguided. It has not only distorted our public
and policy debates on issues related to energy, greenhouse-gas emissions and
the environment. But it also has inhibited the scientific and policy
discussions that we need to have about our climate future. My training as a
computational physicist—together with a 40-year career of scientific research,
advising and management in academia, government and the private sector—has
afforded me an extended, up-close perspective on climate science. (Another
one who's not giving in to the tremendous pressure to go along with the "it's
SETTLED" program. Good for him. --Del)

'You can either make history or be
vilified by it': Leo DiCaprio lectures UN on climate change (but no mention of
his four homes, private jets and renting the FIFTH biggest yacht in the world
from an OIL billionaire)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2766871/Leonardo-DiCaprio-s-climate-change-hypocrisy-As-Hollywood-star-lectures-U-N-MailOnline-reveals-jetset-lifestyle-includes-19-flights-world-year-borrowing-mega-yacht-owned-oil-billionaire.html

Excerpt: But the 39-year-old Hollywood
star's own jetset lifestyle reveals a double-standard on the issue of
climate change. ... MailOnline can report that DiCaprio took at least 20
trips across the nation and around the world this year alone - including
numerous flights from New York to Los Angeles and back, a ski vacation to the
French Alps, another vacation to the French Riviera, flights to London and
Tokyo to promote his film Wolf of Wall Street, two trips to Miami and trip
to Brazil to watch the World Cup.

Excerpt: Earlier this year the Obama administration again
delayed a decision about the Keystone XL pipeline. The 1,200 mile, $5.2 billion
pipeline could increase North American energy security and create more than
15,000 jobs, according to Stephen Moore and Joel Griffith of the Heritage
Foundation. The unwillingness to approve the pipeline can be found in the
insistence by many environmental groups like the Sierra Club that are
vehemently opposed. Yet there is a lesson to be learned about whether to
proceed with the Keystone XL Pipeline from the debates that occurred during the
construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline (TAPS) in which environmentalists
also opposed the pipeline's construction. Since its completion in 1977, TAPS
has flowed more than 17 billion barrels of oil worth more than $1.5 trillion
today. However, the Pipeline was almost not built thanks to the propaganda
campaign launched by many environmental groups, like the Wilderness Group. Court
injunctions, fierce congressional debate, lobbying by environmental groups all
delayed the construction of the pipeline. Since then, the pipeline has not been
involved with any environmental catastrophes.

Excerpt: As President Obama tries to rally the world to
embrace his agenda to curb carbon emissions, Weatherbell Chief Forecaster Joe
Bastardi is condemning the “prostituting” of climate science by Obama and
others to further what he considers a political agenda.

Religion of Peace News

Tweet from Bret Baier @BretBaier

Confirmed: 1st Female pilot for UAE was their team leader in
the Syria
strikes Monday night -Major Mariam Al Mansouri

Excerpt: But six weeks
of bombardment in Iraq,
including almost 200 airstrikes, have resulted in relatively few territorial
gains against Islamic State. ... It's not yet clear whether Washington's
purported allies in Syria
are completely on board with the U.S. offensive against Islamic
State. One of the administration's favored moderate rebel factions, Harakat Hazm, part
of the Free Syrian Army alliance and a recipient of U.S. missiles and training,
issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the "external intervention" —
that is, the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Syria — as "an attack on the
revolution."

Excerpt: Iraq's
prime minister said Thursday that captured Islamic State militants have told Iraqi
intelligence agents of an alleged plot to attack subways in the United States and Paris, but French and American officials said
they had no such information.

U.S.
strikes in Syria
against al-Qaeda’s Khorasan group kill one of its leaders

Excerpt: U.S.
missile strikes against an obscure al-Qaeda cell in Syria
killed at least one of the group’s leaders, delivering what U.S. officials described as a significant but
not decisive blow to a terrorist group accused of plotting attacks against
Europe and the United States.

Obama Tells UN How
Great He Is While Tweaking America.
From The Patriot Post

Last year, Barack Obama took a victory lap at the UN,
announcing, "Today, all of our troops have left Iraq. Next year, an international
coalition will end its war in Afghanistan,
having achieved its mission of dismantling the core of al-Qaida that attacked
us on 9/11." This year, as the U.S.
conducts airstrikes in Iraq
and Syria, Obama told the same body, "I have made it clear that America will
not base our entire foreign policy on reacting to terrorism. Instead we have
waged a focused campaign on al-Qaida and its associated forces." On the
subject of Islam he stated, "And when it comes to America and
Islam, there is no us and them, there is only us -- because millions of Muslim
Americans are part of the fabric of our country." Astoundingly, Obama said
he understands why other nations criticize America for calling them out on
violence because of violence within our own borders. He said, "In a summer
marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world
also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson,
Missouri --
where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So, yes, we have our
own racial and ethnic tensions." Does anyone besides Obama believe that
the shooting of a violent black man in Ferguson (currently the subject of a DoJ
investigation), is tantamount to the violence being committed by ISIL? This
president is an embarrassment to his country.

Excerpt: President Barack Obama favorably quoted and praised
on Wednesday in his speech before the United Nations a controversial Muslim
cleric whose organization has reportedly endorsed the terror group Hamas and
supported a fatwa condoning the murder of U.S.
soldiers in Iraq.

Excerpt: In 2007, then-senator Barack Obama appeared on
CBS’ Face the Nation and was asked by host Bob Schieffer to explain his plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

“One of the things I strongly disagree with Senator McCain
is, this notion that we have future catastrophe to look forward
to if we start phasing down troops. Those of us who object to what I consider
to be a disastrous policy on the part of the Bush Administration have in fact
put forward a different approach. ..."

Excerpt: Last week, the U.S.
Secretaries of State and Defense, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, were in the
Turkish capital, one after the other, to ask for Turkey's
contribution to a coalition of allies in a U.S.-led war on the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria
[ISIS, aka The Islamic State]. Not only will Ankara
take no military action, it will also forbid the U.S.
from using a critical U.S.
air base in southern Turkey
to conduct strikes against the jihadist terrorists, the Turks told Messrs.
Kerry and Hagel.

Excerpt: After spending nearly six years of his presidency
installing a series of constraints on U.S.
counterterrorism operations, President Obama has launched a broad military
offensive against Islamist groups in Syria that stretches the limits of
those legal and policy enclosures. The barrage of airstrikes was aimed mainly at
a militant group, the Islamic State, that is no longer among the al-Qaeda
“associates” envisioned by the military authorization passed after the Sept.
11, 2001, attacks.

Excerpt: This is what always happens when we give Muslims
weapons. Will we ever learn?
Check it out: A claim by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that some of the 600 tons of
weapons the U.S. gave Syrian
rebels last year ended up in the hands of ISIS
is based on the Free Syrian Army’s initial cooperation with a Syrian-backed
coalition of Islamic Front fighters. (Gee, who could have predicted this? Okay I
did as did everyone who thought about it who had better cognitive ability than
a turnip, but who else? ~Bob)

Important: Al Qaeda group in Syria plotted attack against U.S. with explosive clothes

Excerpt: The strikes targeted "training camps, an
explosives and munitions production facility, a communication building and
command and control facilities," the military said in a statement.

The group was actively plotting against a U.S. homeland target and Western targets, a
senior U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday. The United States hoped to surprise the group by
mixing strikes against it with strikes against ISIS
targets. (I can only imagine how that discussion
went. "Look, our bombers are going to be in the neighborhood anyway.
Why not swing by and drop a few big ones on the hideout on the way home?"
--Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt.)

In Case You Lost
Count, This Map Shows the Countries Our Peace-Prize Winning President Has
Bombed

Excerpt: The Islamic State (also known as ISIS) destroyed
the ArmenianGenocideMemorialChurch
in Der Zor, Syria—considered
the Auschwitz of the Armenian Genocide—news agencies in the Middle
East reported.

Obama Forbids FBI to
Use Religion in Identifying Terror Threats, as ISIS Recruits Openly in U.S.
Mosques. By Karin McQuillan

Excerpt: AT had a chance to catch up with Steven Emerson,
head of The Investigative Project on Terrorism, and hear his
assessment of the ISIS threat here on American
soil. Emerson runs the country's top data center on Islamic terror groups in
the United States,
working like a man possessed, and accomplishing the work of thousands on sheer
guts and determination to protect our country. Wherever the bad guys have been
caught and prosecuted successfully, you will find Emerson working quietly
behind the scenes as an invaluable ally of the FBI and Homeland Security.
Because he accepts no money from the government, Emerson has been free of the
diktats of the Obama administration that have forbidden the FBI to train their
sights on Muslim terrorists.

Excerpt: It is one thing to come to migrate to this country
and begin to use the welfare system, it’s totally another thing to demand that
our country now accommodate it to you. Let’s see what the government will do
about this – will they bend to the Muslims demanding Halal customized food
shelves? (Or wipe them down with bacon grease? And some politicians will do
anything to get votes. ~JB)

Excerpt: Turkey's
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a growing list of enemies. "Among his
targets" at a recent address to a Turkish business group "were The
New York Times, the Gezi events of 2013, credit rating agencies, the Hizmet
movement, the Koc family and high interest rates," Zaman reported September 18. Erdoğan earlier had threatened to expel rating agencies Moody's and Fitch
from Turkey if they
persisted in making negative comments about Turkey's credit. Turkey's
financial position is one of the world's great financial mysteries, in fact, a
uniquely opaque puzzle: the country has by far the biggest foreign financing
requirement relative to GDP among all the world's large economies, yet the
sources of its financing are impossible to trace.

Excerpt: Translated from Fyens:
Centrally placed sources told the Norwegian television and radio station NRK
that militants who probably sympathize with the Islamic State this summer
planned to kill a whole family with knives, film it and publish it as a
warning….

Excerpt: Ethnic Fulani gunmen shouting the jihadist chant
“Allahu Akbar” attacked three villages in Nigeria’s Plateau state this month,
burning down a church building and killing at least 10 Christians, sources
said.

Excerpt: Al-Qaeda linked militants in the southern Philippines have threatened to kill two Germans
hostages they have been holding since April unless Germany stops
supporting U.S.
action against Islamic State militants, the SITE monitoring service said.

British man in court
charged with plotting to kill coalition soldiers in Iraq

Excerpt: A 37-year-old British man has appeared in court accused
of plotting to murder coalition forces in Iraq with a roadside bomb in 2007. Anis
Abid Sardar was arrested by counter-terrorism police at his home in Wembley,
north-west London,
on Tuesday. He is alleged to have been involved in the manufacture of a number
of improvised explosive devices recovered from Al Anbar province of Iraq

Excerpt: More than 260 Islamist militants have surrendered
in north-eastern Nigeria,
the military has said. Soldiers had also killed a man who featured in Boko
Haram's propaganda videos pretending to be the group's leader Abubakar Shekau,
it added.

Excerpt: British police arrested nine men as part of an
operation into Islamist-related militancy on Thursday, with media reporting the
country's most high-profile radical Muslim preacher was among those held.